Gabe Sheoships

Roles: Panelist

Gabe Sheoships is the Executive Director of the Friends of Tryon Creek, where he leads efforts focused on community building, environmental engagement, and protection of the natural world. Gabe is Cayuse, an enrolled citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Friends of Tryon Creek is a 52-year-old 501©(3) non-profit organization dedicated to an urban forest within the boundaries of SW Portland and Lake Oswego, Oregon. Environmental education, community engagement, and ecological restoration have been the focus of the organization’s mission, in partnership with Oregon State Parks.

Under Gabe’s leadership, the organization has taken strides to recognize the Indigenous narrative of the land, and to better serve the forest and human community through the lens of an Indigenous worldview. The organization serves 60,000 people each year, of which 25,000 are K-12 youth, primarily elementary age students. Gabe has reinvigorated the organization’s board of directors, strategic plan, mission, and staff to better reflect the whole community, which includes the entire Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. Under his leadership, new programming includes: a cultural fire restoration plan, culturally focused BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Peoples of Color) nature day camp programming, and a campaign to build a new education pavilion within the forest canopy, in addition to continued environmental programming that instills values of ecological stewardship within the large, diverse human community.